"Dear seller" letters back in homebuying

Newlyweds Adam and Molly Sarasins, tired of being beat by cash investors for homes, submitted a cover letter to a home seller in Poway to set them apart from the competition. The strategy worked.
— Bill Wechter / U-T San Diego

Newlyweds Adam and Molly Sarasins, tired of being beat by cash investors for homes, submitted a cover letter to a home seller in Poway to set them apart from the competition. The strategy worked.
— Bill Wechter / U-T San Diego

“I hope this gives you a good overview of why Adam and Molly will be the perfect choice for your new home,” says the letter, which ends with a photo of the smiling couple.

The letter helped. The Sarasins beat out at least two other offers for the Poway home. It also helped that they could make a 20 percent down payment, Hale said.

“The seller’s agent, I guess, liked that Molly and I grew up in Poway and went to high school here and had family in town — all of that,” Adam said.

Effective cover letters share similar characteristics. They tend to describe the buyers, from their professions to why they like the homes. Good cover letters also outline clearly what buyers are willing to bring to the table. They typically state the offer prices and perks for the sellers, such as cover closing costs, says Dave Dennis, another local real estate agent who uses cover letters.

“You need to be brief but strong,” Dennis said. “You need to stand out amongst a sea of offers.”

Rancho Bernardo-based real estate agent Mike Safiedine has received more cover letters from buyers and their agents in recent months, an emerging trend he likes. The cover letters condense the important information into digestible pieces and saves him and his client’s time, he said.

Depending on how they’re presented, the letters can help differentiate potentially problematic buyers from more organized buyers who show they’re on time and ready to close.

“It gets me to look twice and talk to the sellers (my clients)” if the potential buyer is professional, said Safiedine, who has been in the business for 16 years.

The personal nature of the letters also works, especially on sellers who have “a lot of attachment” to their properties, Safiedine added.

At least one real estate brokerage in San Diego is trying out a more visual strategy to grab sellers’ attentions: videos. Al Karim Shivji, an agent at California Real Estate and Mortgage in San Diego, has self-produced a couple of videos of himself summarizing his buyers’ offers for sellers including some details about himself.

“Nobody wants to read an essay,” Shivji said.

Shivji tries to get the potential buyers to star in the videos themselves but many are camera-shy.

The two videos made so far have been well-received but they’ve yet to help him close any deals, Shivji said.

Even though the videos are all less than five minutes, they take almost four hours to make. Shivji is still deciding if that’s the best use of his time and if there’s a way for him to produce a template to expedite the production process.

Until he figures that out, Shivji is sticking mainly to the cover letter strategy and making sure he follows up with sellers for his clients.

Ultimately, it’s about finding a connection between buyers and sellers and “make the process little more human,” Shivji said.